The First Wawa Store Opened in 1964

The first Wawa store opened in 1964.Today the company has 15,000 employees and owns and operates more than 550 units in Ontario,New Brunswick,Manitoba,Saskatchewan,and Alberta.The chain's sales topped $2 billion in 2002.Wawa began as a store for distributing Wawa dairy products.Since then it has gotten into the gasoline business to increase store traffic,but its primary draw is hot meals and cold sandwiches in a quick-service restaurant format that mimics a shopping mall food court.Personalization is a fundamental part of the store concept and is built into things like coffee and sandwiches.Stores have an eight-head cappuccino machine where customers can mix and match whatever flavors they want and add steamed milk or cream,all for the same price as a regular cup of coffee.In addition to being restaurants,Wawa stores also do a big business in a limited line of high-turnover convenience products and can accurately be described as mini-supermarkets.
-Refer to Wawa.In terms of types of retail operations,how could Wawa stores be categorized?

A) as department stores
B) as franchises
C) as discount stores
D) as convenience stores